*** Welcome to piglix ***

Environment of Wyoming


Wyoming straddles the Continental Divide, and its abrupt topographic relief includes alternating basins and mountain ranges. Major mountain ranges include the Beartooth, Gros Ventre, Teton, Wind River, Bighorn, Sierra Madre, and Medicine Bow. Internal basins and eastern plains are rolling to flat, and in the east are the Great Plains.

Typical vegetation includes sagebrush, greasewood, and saltbush shrubs in the intermountain basins, grasses on the Great Plains, juniper and mountain mahogany in the foothills, and forest and alpine meadows in the mountains.

The state lies within the US Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8.

The state of Wyoming, also known as the Cowboy State, has 30.2 million acres dedicated to farm land alone. Being one of the top agricultural states in the U.S, Wyoming has 11,000 farms with the average farm size being 2,726 acres. “In 2001 agricultural lands in Wyoming produced 652.7 million pounds of beef, 31.2 million pounds of sheep and lamb, 3.0 million bushels of wheat, 7.0 million bushels of barley, 6.4 million bushels of corn, and 1.9 million tons of hay” The top crops grown in Wyoming are hay, barley, wheat, beans, sugar beets, and corn. The largest commodity is by far the beef industry in Wyoming.

With approximately 30.2 million acres in agricultural production, Wyoming has eight times more land in agricultural production than the national average. About 27.18 million acres (90%) of the total agricultural land in Wyoming is grazing land; and approximately 9% is cropland (Foulke, Coupal, and Taylor 5). The majority of the agricultural land in Wyoming is dedicated to agriculture operations which owns 5,000 or more acres.


...
Wikipedia

...